Abstract
The referendum result in Britain in 2016 and the potential loss of EU labour in the advent of a ‘hard Brexit’ has raised pressing questions for sectors that rely on EU labour, such as agriculture. Coupled with the closure of the long-standing Seasonal Agricultural Scheme in 2013, policymakers are grappling with how to satisfy on the one hand employer demands for mobility schemes, and on the other public demands for restrictive immigration policies. Labour shortages in agriculture transcend the immigration debate, raising questions for food security, the future of automation and ultimately what labour market the UK hopes to build. Temporary migration programmes have been heralded as achieving a triple win, yet they are rightly criticized for breeding bonded labour and exploitation. In lieu of a dedicated EU labour force, agricultural employers are calling for the establishment of a new seasonal scheme. In this paper, we explore whether the absence of a temporary migration programme resolves the potential exploitation of migrant workers. We argue that the absence of a temporary migration programme (TMP) is not an antidote to migrant exploitation, and that a socially just TMP which is built around migrant agency may be the most palpable solution.
Highlights
The slogan that ‘there is nothing more permanent than temporary foreign workers’ (Martin 2006) has been a popular phrase to express the perceived failures of temporary migration programmes (TMPs)
Throughout the paper, we have underlined that TMPs can be serving a better purpose if they can take into account the agency of the migrant workers
The fact that the TMPs are a triple win can be questioned in many ways as remittances are not a guarantee for development, rights of migrant workers are not always granted fully despite the international conventions on migrant workers’ rights and host countries are not always benefiting from the migrant workers to the utmost level as these migrants do not have the chance to learn how to speak the language and they might be even deskilled doing the temporary jobs
Summary
The slogan that ‘there is nothing more permanent than temporary foreign workers’ (Martin 2006) has been a popular phrase to express the perceived failures of temporary migration programmes (TMPs). Our position is that it is not that TMPs that should be abandoned but the temporariness should be supporting the agency of the migrant workers (Goldring and Landolt, 2011) as much as it supports the employers’ beneficial condition. This should be based on an agreement between the host and the origin country that enables temporariness to become an opportunity and freedom from working in precarious conditions. We move to a review to surmise both the evolution and termination of SAWS, and the current climate following the referendum result in 2016
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